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Comment by druadh | Hacker News Reader

I read Skin in the Game. I know Nassim Taleb is extremely intelligent and his arguments are always strong. But he's such a self-aware a-hole that it negates his positive traits and I just have no interest in what he has to say. Wish he'd change his attitude, people would be more receptive.

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Unfortunately, Taleb being an enormous asshole does not actually negate this paper or any of his other formal arguments.

I agree people would be more receptive if he wasn't a egotistical jerk, but the ironic thing is people dismissing his work because he called them an IYI is just the other side of the fragile ego coin.

I'd be fine with him being an asshole if the quality of his thought were higher. His perspectives are rarely original and often poorly explained, especially if the topic is technical. Unfortunately people get the impression that he's some kind of genius because he's an intellectual celebrity who's bad at explaining his technical ideas (so they must be super deep).

He's at his best with "black swan" and "skin in the game" type stuff - aphoristic, lyrical, qualitative philosophical musing that evokes the best of traditional schools of thought.

This.

Except the real experts in the field don't think much of him. Part of being validated is having the respect of your peers. That's why it's so easy to toss out the opinions of rogue antivax scientists.

I'd be interested in reading which of his peers in which fields have invalidated which of his ideas. Any links appreciated.

What's interesting about Taleb is that given his takes on GMOs and "naive interventionism" he seems to have been advocating quite strongly for COVID vaccination against people that have tried to use his ideas to argue against it.

It would have been so easy for him to use "antifragility" to follow so many other pubic intellectuals who saw an opportunity to promote their "heterodox" brand and gather followers advocating for natural immunity and other remedies.

Thank you for letting me know! Kind of gives me hope for the rest of the field

Taleb is a polemicist, and knows how to use language that feels formal enough to his audience. I dont put any weight behind what he says about crypto currencies.

He is smart and indeed an asshole. BUT not all of his arguments are always strong. I'd say most of his arguments are not. He's Seth Godin for cynics or Joe Rogan for finance bros. He's a pseudo-scientist who rode the 2007-2008 GFC hate for finance people (which was well deserved) to become a toth leader. So, in this case (bitcoin), I think Taleb is carefully positioning himself in the proper direction of the tide. He is a HN sweetheart though. Trash talking Taleb is one of the most satisfying ways I spend my karma around here..

That’s a poor reason to ignore his points no?

It's a good reason to not assume that it's worth reading. I personally gave up following him on twitter because he's such a dick. I personally do find this line of argument compelling though

You may be right, but it does play into accepting some of Taleb's arguments when one lacks his intellectual caliber. I certainly feel that "intellectual honesty" plays a little bit into how harmoniously a great thinker "sells" his or her frameworks. This is one reason why I hardly question the good-will behind a reasoning Chomsky or Pinker or Dawkins, or any other great thinker who consistently shows a more reflexive humanity. Tabeb may be a genius, but his a-holeness indeed makes it hard for me to comprehend him better. Admittedly, the same was probably said of Newton and many others :-(

It’s a good reason to not spend time examining his points, given that time is scarce. That’s not a formal argument that his claims are incorrect, obviously, but it’s a valid reason to not spend my time on him.

Precisely

Taleb is mostly wrong on everything the last decade. Anyone actually intelligent would see him as a con.

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